2005
Each print is 42 x 29.7 cm (16 1/2 x 11 11/16)
40 Lithographs on Somerset Satin White 300 gsm
Edition of 25 + 6 APs
Presented in a white cloth portfolio box with gold debossed title lettering (45.5 x 32.5 x 4 cm)
Each print is hand signed and dated on the back
In this portfolio of 40 lithographic prints, Noble and Webster update the bestselling 1972 publication of The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort, which provided the ‘me’ generation with its gourmet guide to love making. With its recipes of sexual liberation and mildly erotic drawings, the guidebook found its way into bedrooms across the civilised west.
Manuals for erotic pleasure, if not erotic heroism, have provided instruction to ancient Greeks and Romans in black and terra cotta images chasing each other around the circumferences of pottery and to Karma Sutra of the Rajput's harems as well as to 18th and 19th century Japanese Imperial and Korean courts meant to satisfy his or her concubinal lust.
In Noble and Webster’s exquisite drawing suite, from which the prints are derived, the artists update this long tradition for the trans-global, photoshopped and wireless now with their PUNKED up version replacing the beards and hairy armpits of the original with spiky hair and homemade tattoos, iPods and mobile phones never far from reach.
This manual, which is drawn with pencils pinched from various deluxe hotel rooms the artists have stayed and, let's hope made love, in New York, Rome, Bangkok, Mexico City and beyond is utterly up to the moment, post (or pre) apocalyptic skull jewellery wearing lip smacking thirst quenching effortlessly cool with a soundtrack of Siouxsie and the Banshees to help us along in the art of making love in an age which is not quite Kubrick's Space Odyssey, yet is a long way from the macrame-infused bedrooms of Comfort's classic. For certain, this Joy of Sex suite is not your mother's gourmet guide to lovemaking, yet one that is lucid and honest to our nomads as they hopscotch around the globe. One that is able to carry us well into the digitised, multilingual and multi-time zoned twenty-first century and beyond.